WILSON'S PILEOLATED WARBLER 627 



northern breeding grounds. We find the birds most commonly, per- 

 haps, in swampy thickets or roadside shrubbery, although often they 

 frequent well-grown woodlands. They are also at times fairly com- 

 mon visitors to our city parks — the Public Garden in Boston, for ex- 

 ample — during the height of the spring migration, at which time they 

 seem to be in full song. 



In the open country the birds as a rule appear singly, but in the 

 parks they may collect in considerable numbers; Horace W. Wright 

 (1909) reports 10 birds in the Public Garden on a single day. 



Whenever we meet the little bird our attention is sure to be drawn 

 to it by its bright song, and then the eye is caught by the quick spright- 

 liness of its demeanor, and a flash of sunny gold. 



Nesting. — When we meet Wilson's warblers during the spring mi- 

 gration they may be on their way to the far north, for they breed 

 to the limit of trees in northwestern and central Mackenzie as well 

 as in the more southern Provinces of Canada and in northern Maine 

 and New Hampshire. 



In the southern part of its breeding range, where it has been studied 

 carefully, it chooses for nesting the moist sphagnum bogs which are 

 characteristic of this region — lonely, mosquito-infested wastes where, 

 often associated with yellow palm and Tennessee warblers, it builds its 

 nest on the ground. 



Philipp and Bowdish (1917) thus describe a typical nest found in 

 New Brunswick. "On June 16, a nest with five eggs, in which incuba- 

 tion was well commenced, was found in a boggy and quite wet clearing, 

 surrounded by woods, with a considerable growth of small cedar, 

 tamarack, spruce, and balsam saplings. This nest was built in the 

 side of a moss tussock, resting in the angle formed by the abrupt side 

 of the tussock and a little cedar, at the base of which the nest was 

 placed. It was composed of moss, dead leaves, fine weed stalks and 

 grasses, a little hair being mingled with the lining of fine, dead grass. 

 It measured 3.50 x 1.50 inches in depth and 3.50 x 1.75 inches in di- 

 ameter." Of the several nests found they say : "The nests are typical 

 and readily distinguishable from other ground nesting warblers of 

 the region, being very bulky for such a small bird." 



W. J. Brown (MS.) sends this interesting account of the habitat of 

 Wilson's warbler and the behavior of the birds at the nest, drawn from 

 his long "friendship" with the bird, and his intimate knowledge of 

 some 75 of their nests. "In the County of Matane, Gulf of St. Law- 

 rence there is a sphagnum bog three miles in circumference and over 

 a mile across. It is hidden on the west, east, and south by heavy 

 evergreen woods, while the north end extends to the seacoast. 

 Throughout this bog the ground is covered with deep moss, while 

 black spruce, tamarack, and pine saplings are scattered over the whole 



